Well sure, but does it require me to use my phone at some point in the process of account creation? That's the part I have an issue with.
I had assumed that there would be an alternative to access the service post-creation. My gripe is more with the fact that a phone is a requirement at any point.
To put it another way: imagine I had to send a letter to Signal's HQ in order to make an account. Now, obviously I'm not going to be sending and receiving letters constantly to/from Signal, but the mere fact that writing and sending a letter would be a requirement as part of the process would be at the users personal detriment. That's the point I was trying to get at - that it is forcing the user into a specific method which is undesired, arbitrary, and frustratingly unnecessary.
Yeah agreed, as I mentioned elsewhere I don't see why phone number should be required. It's a good default (esp. for non-technical users) to use phone number and contacts (= "social network"), but I really don't see what the problem is with using email or just username/password combo and then adding contacts manually from wherever. Why not have that option? Most people would likely still use their phone number for this.
Yes, I'm aware the desktop app is made with Electron. So what? I keep it running almost all the time and I've never had any performance issues with it.
Well, it's slow, it has awful accessibility, you can't create accounts from a computer, you will have performance issues with it if you need the resources for something else.
I had assumed that there would be an alternative to access the service post-creation. My gripe is more with the fact that a phone is a requirement at any point.
To put it another way: imagine I had to send a letter to Signal's HQ in order to make an account. Now, obviously I'm not going to be sending and receiving letters constantly to/from Signal, but the mere fact that writing and sending a letter would be a requirement as part of the process would be at the users personal detriment. That's the point I was trying to get at - that it is forcing the user into a specific method which is undesired, arbitrary, and frustratingly unnecessary.